5 reasons why your Brand should be on Instagram

With over 95 million photos and videos shared daily, it’s no shocker that Instagram is becoming one of the world’s favourite social channels. Once considered a strictly B2C platform best suited to retail brands that target youngsters, it made sense that a lot of businesses left Instagram off their social calendars once upon a time. These days it’s ranking in as the third most popular social network, right above Twitter and Pinterest. Can you really afford to skip out on Insta?

1. Tune into an engaged audience

Thanks to IG, audiences are becoming more accessible to brands of all shapes and sizes – with 59% of Instagrammers using the platform on a daily basis. It’s been dubbed as the most personal of the social mobile apps what with people sharing content on there that they wouldn’t share anywhere else.

Because the platform is built for quick, frequent engagement in the form of likes and comments on the posts that appear in your feed – the percentage of engaged users is higher than that of Facebook, for example, where there’s almost too much going on for audiences to care.

2. Made for mobile

Everyone knows we live in a mobile-centric world where people lap up bitesize content they can consume on the go rather than the stuff you need to stew over at a desktop. Instagram was made for mobile and, let’s be honest, the IG desktop experience sucks…you can’t even post unless you’re using a smartphone. This has meant that users are essentially forced onto mobile and, as a result, Instagram obliterates mobile traffic from social apps like no one’s business.

3. Stand out from the crowd

While Instagram is increasingly popular, unlike Facebook, it isn’t yet saturated with tonnes of marketing messages. If there was ever a time to make your mark on Instagram’s largely untainted landscape, it’s now. It’s easier to establish a presence when there aren’t thousands of other businesses bidding on your spot. With the right hashtags, imagery and narrative, your content getting seen is practically a given.

4. Tell a visual story

Thanks to its constant stream of rich visuals, which we know dominate other types of content where engagement is concerned, your audience gets instant value from following you.

The app allows you to be creative in a simplistic fashion, with options such as Boomerang videos, stories, galleries and layouts; you have a chance to show your followers how cool you are. Reposting is commonplace on Instagram, so you don’t have to constantly churn out your own top quality content but can curate it too – just make sure you tag the user and don’t edit their work!

5. You’re only human

For the unique opportunity to add a human touch to your brand’s marketing, Instagram’s the one. Unlike other channels, people expect to see a grittier side to your brand on IG.

Not everything needs to be polished and edited to perfection, in fact, audiences trust you more when you show them a human side that they can relate to. Take a snap of where you went for your team lunch, create some behind the scenes Boomerangs at a product photoshoot or share that fun team building exercise your HR team slaved over for weeks.

Show followers the human side to your business and they will interact with you in a more meaningful, personal way.

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AUTHOR:
Heba El-Husseini

As the Digital Account Manager at huzzah! digital, Heba is a creative visionary with a flair for writing. She is a lover of storytelling and the impact it can have on brands. When she's not brushing up on her filmmaking skills, you can usually find her eyeing up the latest fashion trends.